Category Archives: Meeting folks

The Outdoor Retailer is all about the selly-selly-sell. Thousands of outdoor gear exhibitors tout their latest socks, stoves, skis, shoes, snowshoes, and shovels in the effort to wow thousands of buyers (or not). Increasingly, however, it’s also about organizing and affirming the outdoor industry’s growing […]

The Outdoor Retailer is all about the selly-selly-sell. Thousands of outdoor gear exhibitors tout their latest socks, stoves, skis, shoes, snowshoes, and shovels in the effort to wow thousands of buyers (or not). Increasingly, however, it’s also about organizing and affirming the outdoor industry’s growing […]

Wallace Stegner famously said: the West faces you like a dare… I think a lot of Easterners feel that to live out this way is to go after that dare, to live adventurously, to embrace and appreciate the wilderness expanse as well as their adopted […]

Winter has come and I’m determined not to bring bad juju (ie, snarkiness) to the season. As in: “Brrr, I don’t want to do _______ (fill in outdoor activity) because it’s too dang cold.” or “I’m just going to sit around the space […]

This day could be representative of life over the past several months as my partner, Steve, and I embark on this new, adventurous (some might say, ‘curious’) and sometimes arduous leg of life. By “representative,” I mean that fresh, gratifying, and interesting things happen or […]

The Perfect Barn Coat just found its perfect layer, now making it a four-season jacket to love and adore. The perfect layer? The new, ultra thin Kusa jacket from Cotopaxi. The reversible Kusa weighs just 15 ounces and has an attractive quilted stitching pattern on […]

Here’s the thing with being outside and active: you get hungry. Read about getting out and cognitive decline. And the more you tune into your body, the pickier you become about what goes down the gullet. If you listen, your body will tell you what […]

Attending the Outdoor Retailer in Salt Lake City is a bit like heading to the mall on Christmas Eve: be prepared for nuttiness and overstimulation. Read about snacks we discovered at the OR. Read about last year’s OR visit. That said, the OR presents much […]

I always figured folks viewed the wilderness like I did: A place to cherish and protect. A place for quiet observation and reflection. A place where humans could be brought to their knees by the elements or by simple wonder. As I get older and […]

I live on the outskirts of Herriman, a fast-growing, baby-filled suburb of 30,000 on the southwestern edge of Salt Lake County. It’s a landscape devoid of independent business. Read of one restaurant that stands out. Finding interesting stuff means leaving town. Yesterday, it was to […]